This week's gospel text concludes a series of challenges Jesus met when he returned to the temple in Jerusalem for a third day. Since Jesus had asserted his personal authority by ousting the moneychangers and animal-sellers from the temple courtyard on his second visit, it is not surprising that the religious authorities, the Sadducees, Pharisees and scribes, banded together to try to discredit Jesus when he appeared at the temple a third time.

The first three of these confrontations (Mark 11:27-33; 12:13-17; 12:18-27) were decidedly nasty and combative in nature, the establishment authorities were on the attack. But this fourth and final challenge has a different air about it. First, an individual scribe is singled out, speaking, it would seem, for himself and not as a representative of s…